More than 1480 new nurses have applied for new graduate positions – up on last year – but jobs also appear to be on the rise.
A number of the country's largest district health boards have told Nursing Review that they are offering more graduates jobs than the same time last year. Also two of them – Auckland and Waikato are looking to take three or more intakes during 2015 and are prioritising graduates when vacancies arise.
The Nursing Council says about 1380 candidates will be sitting the registered nurse state final exam this month. This is up on the 1350 - mostly recent graduates but also unsuccessful candidates resitting - who sat the exam in November last year.
The number of applicants for NETP (nursing entry to practice) and NESP (new entry to specialist practice, mental health and addictions) programmes are also up by nearly 150 on last year's 1337 applicants. But this November the vast majority (95%) are first time applicants compared to last year when nearly one in five applicants were applying for a second time after being unsuccessful in the July round. (NB see related article about number of second and third time ACE applicants).
The Ministry of Health has confirmed that 1481 new nurses have applied for positions using the nursing Advanced Choice of Employment (ACE) system. ACE is the national clearinghouse for government-subsidised NETP and NESP positions in district health boards and other government-funded health services like residential aged care and primary/community health providers.
Applicants will be notified on November 19 whether they have been successful in gaining a NETP or NESP position. Initially unsuccessful applicants go back into the talent pool with the DHB drawing on the pool to fill vacancies as they arise up to and beyond the start of their February 2015 intakes.
About a third of ACE applicants (561) are seeking jobs with Auckland District Health Board, which has offered limited positions in recent years due to a vacancy-driven model for employing new graduates and low staff turnover. This time last year the Auckland DHB only had 53 jobs on offer, which grew over the summer to 79.
But this year director of nursing Margaret Dotchin said it was offering 89 positions to applicants (74 NETP and 15 NESP) and would be offering more positions as vacancies arose.
She also said that on top of the 72 places it hoped to offer in its mid-year intake it would be offering for the first time a third intake of new graduates in March/April.
"We are prioritising new graduate nurses for employment into vacancies to ensure we give as many opportunities as possible for them to enter the workforce," said Hotchin.
Canterbury DHB is also increasing its intake as part of an ongoing push to meet current and future demand. Becky Hickmott, the DHB's new graduate coordinator said it was looking to take 80 graduates into its NETP programme (seven of those in community or aged care placements) and a further 33 into its mental health NESP programme.
The total of 113 is up on its nearly 100 places it offered at the same time last year. Hickmott said applications were slightly down on the previous year but still strong with excellent calibre applicants. Canterbury does not have an official ringfencing process, with all its new graduates offered permanent jobs, but Hickmott says it unofficially reserves new graduates places on most wards.
Sue Hayward, director of nursing for Waikato DHB, says it is also increasing its places for next year – up six places to 90 places in February (including age care and primary health care) and at least 20 in its mid-year intake.
Waikato has a long-established ringfencing of fixed-term 12 month new graduate positions but Hayward said it is also looking to use the ACE 'talent pool' to take on additional cohorts during the year as vacancies and skill mix allow.
"These NETPs will be supported in clinical practice within the shared clinical load model and then entered into the next NETP programme which may be 2-3 months out."
Hayward said it had about 350 applications this year with numbers and geographical spread similar to previous years. "We are aiming to increase our NETP intake in order to improve succession planning, this we have done over the last 12 months and will continue to focus on this over the next 12-24 months."
Vicky Noble, director of nursing of primary and integrated healthcare for Capital and Coast DHB, said it had 289 applications for places this year and currently had 40 places on offer in its NETP programme and 25 for NESP. "However, we expect these numbers will increase before the end of the year as more vacancies become available." She also said that the DHB had recently changed its new graduate employment model to fixed 12 month contracts to ensure these ringfenced positions were only filled by NETP or NESP graduates and if vacancies became available between intakes the DHB would recruit new graduates to fill them ready to start the programme with the next cohort intake.
Meanwhile the Ministry said an independent evaluation of the ACE process over the last three recruitment rounds (July & Nov 2013 and July 2014) indicated that by the July 2014 round stakeholders considered the system user-friendly and "substantially" improved since the pilot round in November 2012.
Dr Paul Watson, a senior nursing advisor in the Chief Nurses Office, said that last week the chief executives of the 20 DHBs agreed to the continuation of Nursing ACE as the national recruitment process for graduate nurses into the NETP and NESP programmes. "This is an excellent outcome and will enable DHBs to build on the success achieved to date with this process – both for DHBs and graduates."
